6
Katherine
I’m on the auction platform, staring out at an audience full of men in black face masks. Everything is fuzzy around the edges, dreamlike. Moving in slower motion than normal.
I’m led to the right spot on the stage by a man with work-roughened hands, a man with a black face mask like the rest of the men looking at me.
Judging me.
Finding me wanting.
Thinking I’m lacking in one way or another.
They ogle me, their eyes greedy. As if they are trying to tell whether I am even worthwhile or not.
The auctioneer is calling something out, but I’m too fixed by my own private congregants to hear him. I feel their eyes on me, feel them probing. There is a current in this room; an energy that makes me jumpy.
I remind myself yet again that I’m not crazy; half the men in this room wa
